1 in 6 youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year in the U.S. At the same time, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports a severe shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists nationwide, with only 14 of these clinicians per 100,000 children. Overall, only 20% of 13-16-year-olds with mental health issues receive the care they need, and 80% of those young people are receiving care in a school setting. Schools have become the locus of mental health care for young people, but they are not currently resourced to meet this need; innovative solutions are urgently needed.
Between the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER), the federal government allocated over $100 billion to support student well-being since the beginning of COVID. But by the end of 2024, these funding streams will be gone, ending the billions of dollars that have financed additional school counselors, therapists, and infrastructure to support the mental well-being of over 50 million K-12 students. Now what?
The increased need and demand for mental health services have led to rapid market expansion. The youth wellness and mental health market is a nearly $30B industry, with 15X growth over the last four years, according to Telosity Ventures. As other B2B mental health markets, such as employers, saturate, ventures and investors are increasingly focused on adolescents and school systems. But who will pay for these transformative digital products?
Our session will focus on what we’ve learned as investors and ecosystem builders in youth mental health working with school systems. We will explore how catalytic capital investments in youth mental health can impact both school systems and the young people they serve. We will also look at some of the barriers to deploying new solutions for mental health in school systems, including building decision-making capacity of school leaders, creating trust in new products, assessing students’ mental wellbeing needs, and sustaining funding.
All three speakers are addressing this problem in innovative ways by deploying different forms of capital – charitable, impact investment, and venture – and by providing targeted technical assistance and strategic partnership and alignment between innovators and educators.
About our panelists:
Since 2019, Headstream, a partnership between Pivotal Ventures and SecondMuse, has been accelerating youth-informed mental health startups, creating a pipeline of culturally competent solutions for youth wellness. With over 50 companies launching via Headstream, we’ve learned that our startups can only scale if they’re able to meet young people where they’re at – in schools.
The Jed Foundation provides high schools and districts expert support, evidence-based best practices, and data-driven guidance to protect student mental health and prevent suicide.
Both JED and Pivotal Ventures share a commitment to youth wellbeing and are investing in schools, making the process of supporting student mental well-being as seamless as possible for school administrators, educators, families, and students. Together with Headstream/SecondMuse, these are launching a new Roadmap for Digital Health to Address Student Mental Well-being in fall of 2024. Our session will discuss this new Roadmap and how capital providers can play an essential role in advancing youth wellness in schools.
Our session will come with some answers based on our partnerships, but many more questions as we face the federal funding cliff, including:
Why does mental health matter in the education field?
Why should education impact investors be thinking about mental health?
With a looming federal funding cliff for schools as COVID relief spending comes to a close, where is there both need and opportunity for impact investors?
What does the market look like for these products, and what are some of the barriers preventing catalytic capital from entering this market?
We know that young people are getting mental health care, especially LGBTQIA+ and teens of color, in schools, but to what extent are these investments placing the responsibility of treating youth mental health on the education system?
